Saturday 29th June, 2024 - Liberalism, Free Speech, and Even More Politics (Issue #170)
AR & VR, memecoins, macro, digital media publications, liberalism, national debt, history of elections, free speech, state dysfunction, resolving disputes, UK politics, authoritarianism, sad tech
Hello and welcome to my newsletter!
Another season 2 instalment…
Another whirlwind of a week, they’ve started another starvation campaign against me so I’m preparing this issue early. It’s only Thursday. As it happens there’s been a lot of interesting content this week all around quite big heady philosophical concepts that underpin everything. To be honest the way multiple outlets all started publishing stuff on liberalism, authoritarianism and free speech, at around the exact same moment is pretty strange in my opinion. That can happen with current events, fast moving news, quite a lot, but with these larger more nebulous ideas, that have much bigger story arcs, I think it’s unusual. Anyhow, whether it’s some sort of co-ordinated thing or not, the content is very good. Very interesting stuff, food for thought.
There’s still a bit of a droubt when it comes to good and interesting tech and javascript content. That might have something to do with all these elections everywhere, or maybe it’s my frame of mind at the minute, being on the receiving end of all this continuous bullying, does get to you. I’ve found myself starting various tech focussed podcasts only to lose interest and skip to something else. I’m being rushed everywhere I go at the minute, then blocked. I can’t imagine it’s doing much for my attention or my focus. It just feels like I’m constantly in this invisible bumper to bumper traffic jam. Much less fun than bumper cars, but similar in nature, like never ending race conditions. Stop, start, stop, start…
Julian Assange is finally free! Glad he's finally free, very happy for him, his family and friends. My thoughts go out to all others around the world who are unjustly imprisonned, having their lives stolen, being slow murdered.
https://cryptoslate.com/julian-assange-free-from-prison-leaves-uk-for-saipan-after-striking-us-deal
Build minutes will reset in a few days, then I’ll be able to publish to the website again, and finish off the everything page archives feature I was working on before it all got blocked. I have lots of notes I’ve written about some of the crazy shit that’s been happening to me here in Vietnam, lots of links and some blog posts too. You’ll find them all on the everything page at the end of the month:
https://markjgsmith.com/everything
Here’s a list of the blog posts, to wet your appetite:
Jews and Arabs of Jaffa
Does my Bitcoin have a covenant attached to it?
The magic of Glastonbury music festival
The great british seaside holiday
The printing press vs the world wide web
If any of those titles take your fancy, check back on the website at the end of the month, that’s the earliest I’ll be able to publish them.
https://markjgsmith.com/blog
I’ve been thinking about 3 main things this past week.
First is magnitude of the hard won battles humans have gone through to create the fundamental ideologies that underpin our societies, in comparison to other hard won battles in tech that have happened over the past several decades, that created the bedrock of the internet and World Wide Web. I’m in awe of it all. It’s truely mindblowing what we have managed to build.
Then there’s the much more current thing of elections, the ones in the EU, US, UK and France. It’s really quite exciting stuff. The idea that I keep falling back to is how much it reminds me of agile software development. Isn’t being a politician basically just managing an agile software development backlog, all be it a very large and complex one? Seems like it is to me, and seing it get very complicated in France with these massive coalitions, you can see things breaking at the seams, the politicians can’t remember which policies are from their party and which are from the coalition’s. Perhaps they should have some software development tools like Git, merge and AI stuff to help them manage this craziness?
Finally I’ve been thinking a lot about the social layer vs the monetary layer. These are concepts Bitcoin folks talk about quite a lot. My recent experiences here in Vietnam where I’m getting continuously bullied and blamed for things that I have no control over really show how bad things can get when the social layer becomes corrupt, when it’s dominated by a vocal minority, who’s interests are aligned with keeping you down. The scary thing is it can totally over-ride even the financial layer in society. It’s incredibly messy, and we are introducing very powerful digital tools and concepts, when we can’t even get the basics right without them. It just feels so dangerous to me.
Maybe I’ll find some time to write a few blog posts about these topics. At least I’ve mentioned them here, and at least there will be an issue of the newsletter this weekend, even if the world continues it’s starvation campaign against me. I have a couple of days of drinking water left.
Hoping you are all in good health. Keep on moving even if it seems hopeless.
Btw, Google Podcasts finally shutdown and so I’ve had to find other places to link to for shows that don’t have their own website. It’s not as consistent as GP, still looking for a good podcast directory with individual show pages.
Podcasts
The next thing in AI and AR (Vergecast Podcast) - I don’t quite remember what they were talking about exactly as it was earlier in the week but given there aren’t that many tech podcasts this week, it was one of the best ones I listened to. https://dcs.megaphone.fm/VMP4717731675.mp3
Rollup: ETH beats SEC, Trump Coin | LayerZero Coin | Eth ETF Trading Soon (Bankless Podcast) - There was a whole bit on memecoins in this episode which I found pretty interesting given where we are in the crypto cycle. It’s still risky stuff, but the concepts are interesting. https://www.bankless.com/rollup-eth-beats-sec-trump-coin-layerzero-token-eth-etf-trading-soon
Drinks with Raoul Pal (Round 6): Macro, Crypto & Bananas (Raoul Pal: Journey Man Podcast) - An assortment of interesting tit bits, some reasonable sounding advice and ways to think about the markets. Remember though, investment is risky. https://www.youtube.com/live/BPs_lLabPpo
The Onion Knight Ft. Ben Collins (Better Offline Podcast) - This was one of the highlights of the week for me. All about online publishing businesses, why they are all under strain. Ben has taken over the Onion recently and him and Ed have quite a thorough chinwag about the industry. His plans for the Onion are really interesting and where he things the industry is heading. https://omny.fm/shows/better-offline/the-onion-knight-ft-ben-collins
Alexandre Lefebvre: Why Liberalism is a Way of Life Ep#2105 (Keen On Podcast) - Another one of this week’s highlights. Liberalism is a concept I didn’t really know that I didn’t know much about it. And it makes sense because much of our societies have it baked in at this point, so we take it for granted. But it was a long and bumpy road to get to where we are, likely thousands of years of philosophical explorations. I want to learn more about this, specifically I want to understand who it advantages and whom it might be more difficult for, and how we deal with that.
Does Debt Really Matter? (The Rest is Money Podcast) - Great episode with a very clear and lucid explanation of a topic that can get quite complex. The short answer is yes national debt matters, but it’s a bit complicated, but not so complicated we can’t all understand it. Definitely worth listening to. https://dcs.megaphone.fm/GLT6697751187.mp3
Mad Elections - Part 1 (Rest is History Podcast) - This series is shaping up to be another RIH classic. Very topical, lots of silliness and crazyness from history that you won’t believe used to happen. It’s really amazing how far we have come. https://dcs.megaphone.fm/GLT4220133865.mp3
Why We Should Fight For Freedom of Speech | Greg Lukianoff (Bankless Podcast) - Another one of this week’s highlights. Free speech is a complicated topic, but super important to understand as we move forward into the future where everything is digitised. I feel like I need to listen to this one another time. https://www.bankless.com/freedom-of-speech-greg-lukianoff
The Dysfunctional State (What Bitcoin Did Podcast) - So much dysfunction everywhere, the first step to solving / fixing it is to identify it, and they do a great job of that in this episode, even if I don’t agree with their approach to solving it. https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/the-dysfunctional-state
Unlock Your Why With Simon Sinek Ep#63 (Kevin Rose Podcast) - This was one of the surprises for me this week. I went in thinking it would be way to woo for my liking but actually there was a load of very interesting and practical advice about conflict resolution in home life and business. Worth the listen. https://www.kevinrose.com/unlock-your-why-with-simon-sinek-63
Sunak’s betting scandal, Farage in trouble, and will Rory vote Green? Ep#272 (The Rest is Politics Podcast) - Another great episode with general coverage of the UK elections. This whole betting scandal is very mindboggling, really is quite a big scandal. https://dcs.megaphone.fm/ADV2296218542.mp3
The Case for Authoritarianism with Vitalik Buterin & Noah Smith (Bankless Podcast) - This one blew my mind, what an idea for a show. I’m a big believer in facing one’s fears and this is certainly that especially for western democracies. Turns out the modern world is quite well suited to authoritarian regimes. It’s worth understanding where and how, so we can move forward accordingly knowing where the dangerous areas are. https://www.bankless.com/the-case-for-authoritarianism-vitalik-buterin-noah-smith
Where Did Tech's Magic Go? Featuring Alex Cranz and Michael Fisher (Better Offline Podcast) - This one was great because it’s a sort of Vergecast crossover episode, and also because the level of discussion was pretty high from all participants. Quite a lot of complaining about the industry, but all coming from a good place, this lot want tech to succeed, they highlight important topics to consider, and with a good balance of humour. https://omny.fm/shows/better-offline/where-did-techs-magic-go-featuring-alex-cranz-and
Last minute addition:
Advantage Trump: Will the Democrats move to replace Biden? (Rest is Politics Podcast) - I listened to this under pretty extreme conditions being infiniti-no’d from all directions, so I it was a bit tricky staying focussed, but it’s a great episode with top notch commentary and analysis of all the winer-ing going on. It actually gets a bit heated in places, I got a sense of UK-US historical issues surfacing among the hosts. I could be wrong about that, like I said it’s very chaotic where I am, total cluster-f of synchronicities. Anyway, I think it’s worth listening to. https://pdst.fm/e/chrt.fm/track/A27C8C/traffic.megaphone.fm/GLT8717236746.mp3
That’s all from me…
Best regards,
Mark
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